"Prime Minister
Erdoğan can keep stepping up his attacks on social media, but they only serve
to show that he is afraid of the message and desperate to shoot the messenger,"
CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator
Nina Ognianova said. "We call on Turkish authorities to restore
access to Twitter and to substantiate their claims to democracy by allowing all
information to flow freely."

At a campaign rally on Thursday in the western
city of Bursa, Erdoğan
claimed that a court
order justified banning Twitter, according to press reports. The Turkish telecommunications
regulator BTK
said today that Internet service providers had been ordered to block access to
Twitter after several users filed legal complaints in early March about
violation of their privacy on the social networking site. BTK said the measure
was intended to prevent the possible "victimization of citizens."

"Any
court in any country would implement this kind of decision whenever it notices
an attack against people's privacy rights," the Turkish Anadolu Agency
reported
Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç as saying.

But
the English-language Turkish daily Hürriyet Daily News reported today that the
Istanbul Heavy Penal Court told the Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB)
that Twitter had been blocked as a result of an "executive decision, not a
judicial verdict." TBB had filed a petition with the court requesting that the ban
be lifted, the report said.

"The rights to freedom of information and freedom of speech
are all the more crucial in the run-up to elections," CPJ's Ognianova said.

The
blocking of Twitter has already been overcome by many Turkish Twitter users,
including Turkish
President Abdullah Gül, who called the Twitter ban unacceptable. He said in
a tweet: "There is no
way that closing down social media platforms can be approved."

As
a sign that the blocking did not have much effect on Twitter traffic, the
hashtag #TwitterIsBlockedInTurkey began trending from
within the country
a few hours after the ban was announced. Neelie Kroes, vice president
of the European Commission who is also in charge of the European Union's
digital agenda, called Turkey's ban "groundless, pointless, cowardly."